Solo Exhibit at Broadway Gallery

Exhibit Scheduled to Run from July 1st to 15th, 2005

Opening Reception: Wednesday, July 6th, 6-8pm

NEW YORK, NY June 17, 2005 – World Art Media is pleased to announce the opening of My Inner-Outer Garden, featuring works by Laurie Blum. Scheduled to run from July 1st to the 15th at Broadway Gallery (473 Broadway, 7th Floor, NY, NY 10013), the collection will feature paintings in gouache on paper. The artist is inspired by the living energy of nature and animals. Her recent works have focused on symbols from Persian poetry — Sarv Naz, chanar trees, nightingales, rose gardens, orange blossoms and the Ku mountains — and are rich in color and texture, reflecting the vitality of nature. It is the artist’s belief that Shiraz is the most beautiful place on Earth and she hopes that her paintings on Iran will allow her to share this sublime beauty with others.

“Ancient people drew shapes of animals and they believed these forms held the soul of that animal and were healing… I feel when I paint Nature and animals, that the living vitality is captured mysteriously in the work. As if I am an alchemist making living potions.”

Born in New York in 1953, Blum studied art at the High School of Art and Design in New York, then at the N.Y. Studio School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture. She also attended Philadelphia College of Art and Laney College of California State. While living in California in the 1970s, Blum was captivated by the book Layla and Majnun written by the great Persian poet Nizami. She drew inspiration from the tragic story of a human love that became divine love. This apotheosis became a metaphor for the beauty Blum wished to express from Nizami's melodious symbolic language that conjured the sublime imagery portrayed in the Persian Miniature paintings. Blum followed this path that led her to a Spiritual Master, Meher Baba and in 1973 traveled to India on a spiritual retreat. There, she befriended Meher Baba’s chief female disciple, Mehera J. Irani, who introduced her to Persian poetry and language. After studying and painting pictures of Meher Baba and Mehera Irani in the United States, she built a waterfall and garden in the 1990s that she called her Persian-Inner-Outer Garden.

In 2003-2004 she traveled to Iran and in 2004 was given the honor by the Shiraz Institute of Cultural Affairs of being the first painter to exhibit her work at the Tomb Shrine of Hafez in Shiraz, Iran.